Samples and summary of faculty scholarly activities - St. John Fisher ...

I’m trying to accept it. I have ups and downs
sometimes. I want to yank my eyeball out, and kind
of polish it.’’ Denial is an important part of grieving
the loss of vision; however, Brennan warns that
denial ‘‘is perhaps the easiest [phase] to become
stuck in’’ (2002, p. 28). Emerging from denial may
allow a focus on learning skills necessary for
independent living. This was evident in participants
who had learned about their visual impairment before
coming to college; they were well past initial grief and
denial and had matter-of-fact attitudes about their
abilities and plans.
As participants’ visual acuity changed, so did their
need to adapt to their environments, including the
people around them, in new ways. For example, one
young man felt strongly about planning for an
independent life. His mother was concerned, however,
and was not sure this was possible. Miner (1995), in
her interviews with people with Usher syndrome type I
and their families, also found that parents were
concerned about their child’s future. In this case, the
participant was frustrated with his mother’s perception
that he would not be able to live independently:
Can’t can’t can’t. That’s wrong. I know that I can
do many things. I can learn to do each thing in a
different way. I can cook, I can clean, I can wash,
and I can do a whole list of things. I can be
independent in my own house. I will be just fine.
He believed that he could learn the skills he needed,
even though he might complete tasks in a ‘‘different
way’’ than people who are hearing and sighted. This
conflicted with his mother’s perspective. He adapted to
his changing vision by planning to learn new strategies;
this attitude of coping and finding solutions instead of
accepting living at home was common.
A second example of finding solutions involves a
participant who had difficulty seeing in the dark, which
limited her participation in crew (which involved
practice before dawn). Her coach urged her not to
quit when her vision changed, and she continued with
crew for a time. What she found, though, was that
getting to practice and then trying to synchronize
rowing with her teammates was exhausting and took
more energy than she was willing to expend. Instead,
she quit the team and found other outlets for physical
activity. Her decision was deliberate and matter-offact:
She noted that although she enjoyed being on the
team and the camaraderie of her teammates, the
College Students Who Are Deafblind
energy it took to navigate getting to the boathouse,
then trying to match her teammates’ motion, was
simply not worth it.
A final example of ways that participants adjusted to
visual impairment is a young woman who left an
independent living program to attend college. In
describing her decision to leave a residential independent
living program to come to college, she noted:
I will get more training about blindness later, but I
want to have the time for my education first, then
maybe I’ll be blind . . . and transfer into independent
living programs later if I want. Right now I
want to get my degree before my vision deteriorates.
In this example, as in the first two, the participant is
deliberate and matter-of-fact about the vision she has
now and how she can make the best use of the
resources around her.
Academic Supports
The second finding was the importance of academic
supports in participants’ lives. All participants discussed
academic supports and negotiating with their
instructors at Sunnyside College. Although Sunnyside
College serves a population of students who are
audiologically deaf, the population of students who are
deafblind is small, and supports were individually
determined. This aligns with best practice recommendations
of individualized supports (Lago-Avery, 2001/
2002; Lieberman & Stuart, 2002; Miles, 2003; NCDB,
2009; Riggio & McLetchie, 2008).
Adaptations for individuals who are deafblind are
different from those used for people who are
primarily or only deaf (Correa-Torres, 2008). At
Sunnyside College and Parent University, academic
supports included one-to-one interpreters, small
personal televisions that reproduced images from a
PowerPoint presentation or overhead projector, C-
Print, and note-takers. The range of supports
reported by participants is similar to the range listed
in 2001 by Jordan; that list also includes assistive
listening devices, tutors, readers, large-print and
braille texts, and reading machines. In a review of
how New York University supported a student who is
deafblind, Bourquin (1994) noted there were two
major factors that led to successful service delivery.
First, planning was integral: needs were anticipated
when possible and identified as early as possible.
Second, and harder to quantify, was the attitude of
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